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The entire Dead Space franchise has been ‘shelved’ as new remake disproved-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro
An argument between EA and a prominent leaker seems to have ended with confirmation that a remake of Dead Space 2 is not happening.
![The entire Dead Space franchise has been ‘shelved’ as new remake disproved-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/DeadSpace_Keyart-01_3Layers_16x9_RGB-3b35.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1024)
Dead Space is dead now (Picture: EA)
An argument between EA and a prominent leaker seems to have ended with confirmation that a remake of Dead Space 2 is not happening.
Earlier in the week, EA was discussing their future plans for Battlefield, and it was revealed that the co-directors of last year’s Dead Space remake were leading a team at developer EA Motive, to work on a new Battlefield game.
Naturally, that seemed to preclude the chance of them overseeing a remake of the second game – regarded by many as the best in the series – or a new entry. It was then suggested that a second remake had been in development, but that it was cancelled because of ‘lacklustre’ sales of the original.
Unusually, EA issued a statement denying this, which leaker Jeff Grubb then argued against, creating the sort of online argument that almost never happens between publishers and insiders. Although, sadly, it now seems that EA was right, and Grubb was wrong.
According to Grubb, the Dead Space 2 remake was in pre-production before it was cancelled. ‘They were working on Dead Space 2, and they are no longer working on it,’ he said of EA Motive.
‘It is on the shelf because the first game had lacklustre sales, is how it was phrased to me,’ he said on the Game Mess Mornings podcast.
Grubb clearly has good industry contacts, but he has made mistakes in the past – although this is the first time a publisher has stepped in to correct him.
‘We don’t normally comment on rumours but there is no validity to this story,’ EA told IGN.
However, the vagueness of their comment led Grubb to double-down on Twitter, saying: ’I give you my permission to believe EA if you want, but whenever a company says ‘that isn’t true’ but they don’t specify which part of the story they are talking about, well… yeah.
‘Dead Space 2 was definitely being planned. It had a codename. And they aren’t making it now.’
Somehow that still wasn’t the end of it, with Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier stepping in to try and explain the situation, suggesting that Grubb had been confused by the fact that Motive’s new project has the same codename as when they were still working on Dead Space – which to be fair to Grubb, is not how codenames are supposed to work.
According to Schreier’s report, EA made the decision to ‘shelve’ the entire Dead Space franchise last spring, shortly after the original remake’s release, when sales apparently missed their goals.
Although the remake reviewed well, and the team at Motive did an excellent job, EA did always seem to overestimate the franchise’s popularity, given even the original wasn’t a particularly big hint back in 2008.
Nevertheless, a small team at Motive did apparently spend a few months coming up with ideas for a new entry, as well as looking into remaking the second game. Apparently neither project was greenlit though, and the majority of developers were quickly moved onto other franchises.
Schreier then clarified the codename issue on Twitter, adding: ‘It was never really a Dead Space 2 remake, and for nearly a year it’s had nothing to do with Dead Space.’
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So that seems to be that, in terms of the controversy, the remake, and Dead Space in general.
EA’s renewed interest in the franchise was clearly brought on by the success of Capcom’s remakes of various Resident Evil games, but unless something unexpected happens to suddenly make survival horror games big sellers again that is probably the last that will ever be heard of the Dead Space franchise.
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